Return of the King

The first wine of the Adelaide Hills Cup was a neighbour: Pike and Joyce's Riesling 2024, grown twenty minutes up the road from the room it was poured in. Only five of the twenty-one palates on the floor placed it in the Adelaide Hills; sixteen sent the local somewhere else.

Two pours later the room got into gear. Simon Tolley's own Chardonnay — the host's fruit, served blind at its own cellar door — fooled no-one and came back the best-read wine of the day: 89 of a possible 105 calls were correct. A room that couldn't spot the stranger next door read the host wine nearly perfectly.

And the man who ended the afternoon holding the Cup read Round 1 worse than half of them. Eleventh after the options game, into the bracket with a close call in Round 2, Stefan was seeded seventh of eight. A shaky start for the reigning Grand Final champion.

The Cut

Round 1 is the options game — five wines, five calls each, twenty-five on offer, and the day's first ladder. The Hills room was the sharpest of the season: 351 of 525 calls correct, 67% as a floor, against 55% at Clare. Liam H. topped it on 24 of 25 — a season record — one missed call across five blind wines.

The shape of the room's knowledge was the story inside the story. Competitors nailed 90 of 105 Old World / New calls and 86 vintages, an impressive feat in itself. But the group began to lose confidence as the questions came closer to home: 66 countries, 59 varieties, and regions dead last at 50 correct calls — the category that hid the local Riesling from sixteen palates.

Only the top four seeds lock in from Round 1 — and even that needed an extra pour, a tie-break Pinot to split two palates level on 19. Stefan Sancin wasn't anywhere near the conversation. His 16 of 25 left him equal eleventh, level with three others, in a room where the average was 16.7.

Round 2

The last four chairs in the bracket go through Round 2, and this is where the day turned. Sancin's intuition for American regions earned him a ticket to Round 3 as the seven seed. Behind him came Harrison Davies as the eight — carrying the sting of a Round 1 score of 18 that would have been top-six at any other cup this season and still wasn't enough to lock a chair.

Hold that thought: both of them, the seven and the eight, the two men who had to win their way into the room. The final would belong to nobody else.

The Blackout

Round 3 is played in black glasses — one wine, no colour, no clues, head to head. Seeds are supposed to matter here.

The quarter-finals dismantled that idea in an hour. Davies, the eight, knocked out Liam H. — the top seed, the season-record palate, gone first. Sancin, the seven, ended the day of two seed Patrick Gilhooly. By the semis the bracket's bottom half was running the show: Davies put out Jordan Kaas, Sancin took down three seed Siyuan Hua — who then won the bronze playoff for third.

So the final was seven versus eight, and the glass between them held a Tollot-Beaut Savigny-lès-Beaune Champ Chevrey 2019 — a $168 Burgundy premier cru, the most serious wine of the day, invisible in black. Sancin called it better. The 2025 champion, eleventh at lunch, had beaten the two, the three and the eight to win the Adelaide Hills Cup.

What It's Worth

The ledger reads: 15 points for playing, 16 banked in Round 1, 100 for the win. That's 131 points — top of the season ladder, three points clear of Clare Cup champion Roberta Ruotolo.

But the real prize is the Free Run: a guaranteed seat at the Grand Final on Saturday 5 December — twenty-four chairs, $5,000, winner takes all. Which sets up the season's best storyline. The man defending the 2025 title in December no longer has to qualify for the chance. The champ is back, and he's already in the room.

Two cups down, three to play. The Barossa Bowl is next — Saturday afternoon, 19 September, at The Barossa Cellar. Seats and the live ladder are at bottleshock.tv/league/cups.

For the record: a service mix-up in Round 1 saw Wine 3 poured in Wine 2's slot, caught after the first question — so Wine 2's opening call was awarded to all twenty-one players. The house pays its debts. Every other number here is exactly as played.